


Who You Gonna Call?

by authenticaussie



Series: Side-effects May Include [1]
Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Gen, Spiritual Bullshitting, Talking To Dead People, the author has decided that a good time is had in hypothesizing about the morphing grid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-17 22:39:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10603740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authenticaussie/pseuds/authenticaussie
Summary: It is not recommended that one dies. If one does die, side effects may include:-death-pain-the ability to see one's dead father (?)





	

He comes back different.

Well, he’s already different. He’s always been _different_ (there’s a reason he says _spectrum_ and never specifies, ‘cause he’s on a lot and listing the names just makes people stare,) but this different is different from his normal different.

This different is waking up to his father chiding him for being late for school.

He doesn’t piece it together, at first. Seven years and four months aren’t much compared to a lifetime, after all, and his dad used to wake him up when they’d been up late the night before, working together. Having it back in his routine now feels simple, feels good, and it takes until he gets down to the kitchen and sees two plates for the dots to reconnect.

He looks at his dad, and his dad looks back at him and then says, “Oh.” 

“I think there is a problem,” Billy says, because he feels like saying _does this make me Danny Phantom_ will not be appreciated by his dad.

His dad, the ghost.

* * *

Jason at his door for their morning run stops any further questions, and when Billy gets to school his dad isn’t there. He can’t help but wonder if it’s a person proximity thing, or a location proximity thing, but more of him is preoccupied with the fact that he keeps seeing apparitions flicker in the corner of his eyes. He’s always been fidgety, and restless, and he’s never been able to stop himself stimming but today it’s so much worse. 

He ends up in detention purely by accident, this time, and would think it funny if ending up in detention still didn’t make him uncomfortable. Rules and routines are _good_ ; to have to break them so frequently, especially by accident, makes it hard for him to breathe.

Trini helps though. Slips him chunks of another accidentally broken device she’d gotten to frustrated with, and his smiles at her like he knows he should. She smiles back, and he begins to sort all the pieces out - it looks like a radio, but one of the old tuning ones you use to listen to rocks. He’s never seen one before, and it’s a significant enough distraction for him to muster up the courage to ask, 

“Do you ever….see anything strange?“ 

Trini looks at him and then looks down at the lightning bolt in the middle of her chest that Kim had designed and printed on shirts, and the new poster on the wall that lists what to do in the event of an alien attack. "No,” she says flatly, and it takes him a moment to piece together the sarcasm, and then another few more to realise what she’s referring to.

It isn’t the girl popping bubble gum by her shoulder.

Trini hasn’t looked at her the whole time they’ve been in detention, but Billy’s eyes keep skirting back to where she sits, an inch above Trini’s desk. It seems like a location thing, he thinks, because when he’d seen Trini this morning in science right before his beaker had overflowed, he hadn’t noticed the girl.

The girls smiles at him, and blows a pink bubble, then a blue one.

He’s lucky his friends don’t mind him not looking at their faces, at his eyes sliding off them and into corners as he’s speaking, because it’s easier to concentrate when what he’s looking at doesn’t have things that are constantly _changing_. Things he needs to understand but probably never will.

He’s lucky, in that aspect, because now they don’t realise the reason he isn’t looking at them is because other things keep stealing his attention.

“I mean, like-” he tries, hand cycling, and he almost loses a wire to the back corner of the classroom. When he catches Trini frowning he sighs quietly and shakes his head. “Never mind, please.” He mumbles, and Trini nods carefully.

“Got your back if you need it.”

* * *

Kimberly’s ghost stims like him. Picks at a line of hairbands up her arm like she’s plucking guitar strings, pulling a melody from their stretched elastic bodies.

Sometimes he almost thinks he can hear it. Soft, like harps and acoustic guitars and low humming. It fills the library till it feels as though he couldn’t breathe without it sounding like the tune of her song, and then it’s gone, the hollow echo of it in the space between Kimberly’s words.

It makes it hard to concentrate, harder than usual, and he hates how difficult it is to pay attention to her words. He _likes_ listening to Kimberly talk, the cadence of her voice as it rises and falls, and it’s _nice_ to have in the background, but now, with the music and the girl and-

Kimberly acts like she doesn’t notice, but she stops talking soon after he starts tapping, and starts passing him notes instead.   

* * *

Billy never, ever wants to see Zack’s ghost. It happens once; once is more than enough.

(She looks like Zack. Same dark hair, same dark eyes. Same proud stature, same wild grin now that it’s no long contorted in pain.)

Zack gets the call in the middle of biology, and ignores when Mr. Pelgrave tells him to hand in his phone. Just says, “My _mom_ ,” and is out the door before anyone can stop him. The ghost by his side vanishes with every step she takes, mouth set in grim determination.

“Not yet,” Billy says, pleading, and doesn’t care how it looks. “Don’t leave him yet.”

She smiles at him, soft and pained and understanding.

They take shifts outside his trailer until Zack finally comes outside, flopping down on the steps next to Billy in exhaustion. His head drops into his hands, and his breathing is hard and deep, every part of him strung tight.  

At first Zack doesn’t want to be touched. Then, slowly, he leans into Billy’s shoulder, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“She’s okay,” he mumbles, and Billy tries to think about what people do when this happens. Thinks it isn’t applicable to pat them but that’s really all he can reach Zack to do, and moves his hand to gently hit the back of Zack’s knuckles.

“She loves you.” He says, and sees Zack’s eyes open slowly, caught on his hand. He moves his fingers, slightly, and Zack takes it as careful invitation. “If you need us to help…”

“Yeah,” Zack says softly, nodding, and holds on tight to Billy’s hand. “I got it.”

* * *

"Hey man, are you okay?”

Jason’s hand hovers above his shoulder, then moves away, tracing down the air above his bicep like there’s an invisible shield over it.

He wishes there _were_  an actual shield. People touching him always makes him more uncomfortable than their aborted half movements. Just makes him think about walking through spiderwebs, feeling the ghostly sensation of _things_  along his arms.

He wonders if he should thank Jason for realising that he hates being touched. Figures Jason already knows. Wonders if he should thank Jason regardless.

“Billy?”

(Jason’s ghost is tiny. Rocks back and forth on his feet and mimics how Jason stands, hand in his pocket. His shirt has a tiny lion on it, cartoon teeth rounded and white just like the kid’s own.)

He drags his eyes up, remembers what his mom says about smiling and tries to grin wide, “yes, yeah! No, yes, I’m okay. Okay being in my normal state of being, that is, not wrong, not _not_ wrong?” he pauses; frowns. Remembers about smiling again and tries to grin, but Jason’s already looking at him worriedly and grinning makes it worse.

“Okay man,” Jason says, and his mouth does the thing where it pinches at the corners. Billy doesn’t know if it’s the Morphing grid or just his knowledge of Jason that lets him know that Jason is unhappy and concerned, but either way it makes something uncomfortable twist in his chest. Is this another side affect of coming back from the dead? Of being a Ranger? Of being so connected to the Grid that he can _feel_  it when his teammates need help? “But you can tell us anything, you know that right?”

He does know; he does tell them everything, partially because he doesn’t have the filter to stop himself but mainly because they take it in their stride, heads bobbed like wobble head dolls as they file away the information Billy provides, and they use it, too. Make notes about what he doesn’t eat. Doesn’t drink. What he needs when things get to loud.

Ranger training helped a lot with that, actually. For all that his spatial awareness will never be like Jason’s, innate and easy, nor his co-ordination like Zack’s, Ranger training gave him an easier way to clear his head.

He used to map things, plot them out like seafarers plotted out stars so they wouldn’t get lost coming home; now he gets sweaty and tired and _home_ is in the sound of Kim’s shuffling laughter and Zack’s huge heavings of air. Jason’s hand close enough to touch if he ever wanted, the soft smell of Trini’s shampoo and dust in the air. _Home_ is easier to find when it’s people instead of feelings.

You can tell _me_ anything, Jason seems to say as he tucks his hand into his pockets, the set of his light eyes serious. 

Billy doesn’t know if he knows this subtext through their friendship or through the Grid.

“I think I see dead people?” he says, “Dead people that like the Rangers?” Jason blinks once and then nods slowly.

“Okay.” He says, sounding a little weak but refusing to let it stop him. “Do we need to fix that?”

“I think it’s okay?” Billy says, hand tapping on his left leg like he’s typing, like his body is a search bar and he’s questioning what the answer to this is, “They’re not _bad.”_

Jason nods slowly again, and his eyes go down to where Billy can’t stop himself looking. He doesn’t see the kid, obviously, eyes to far to the left, but the kid beams at him regardless. “Just distracting.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it okay?” Jason asks, and the tiny frown comes back into his face. “For you to- the distractions?”

“Trini’s one keeps sticking her middle finger up at me. And signing rude stuff at the teachers.”

A bark of laughter escapes Jason, and the frown turns into a wide grin. “Of course Trini’s would.” 

Billy grins back at him, thinks about his dad and ghosts and living, and that this probably isn't the _weirdest_ thing about their lives, then asks, “Wanna get a doughnut, and come meet my dad?” 

**Author's Note:**

> im here, im queer, and im Totally in Love with power rangers please come hit me up @ authenticaussie.tumblr.com and yell at me about my new kids (aka hEY GUYS IM NEW HERE AND I LOVE REQS)
> 
> Also my favourite thing about posting this wAS BEING ABLE TO TYPE THE TAG CANON!!!!!! AUTISTIC!!!!!!!!! CHARACTER!!!!!!!
> 
> Reviews are also appreciated!! <333


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